


His Boys

by sobefarrington



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: JARVIS - Freeform, Multi-Character Death, Peter Parker - Freeform, steve rogers - Freeform, super family, tony stark - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:28:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sobefarrington/pseuds/sobefarrington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony loses the only things that truly matter to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Boys

**Author's Note:**

> Suicide, Thoughts of Suicide. Emotional Distress, and Grief plague this fic. There are major character deaths within.  
> *I never know how to tag things with warnings without spoiling the story.*

It was half past five in the morning and Tony was on the floor of his lab. His old grey sweatpants were stained with paint from re-doing Peter’s room six years ago, oils and dyes from working late nights in his lab and, more recently, coffee and tears. His Black Sabbath shirt was torn at the collar half way down the front, ruining the design and exposing his arc reactor for the world to see.

It was the first time in weeks Tony had a moment to himself.

The first time in months he’d been alone in his home.

At first, when they’d lost Peter… Tony had been a wreck. He put all of his time and energy into his work. He was always in the lab. He never slept. He refused to eat. Tony tried to pretend it never happened. He tried to put that fateful night so far out of his mind that it was absolutely unreachable. But his persistent non-remembering only made the memory that much more vivid. That much more real. The truth burdened him more when he tried not to think about it.

It was senseless. Tony felt that was the worst part, that that hurt more than the actual loss of his only son. That he wasn’t Spider Man when the bullet entered his chest and bounced around his insides. He wasn’t trying to fight crime. He was ignoring his senses while walking past Chinese Express, fearful of being late for Algebra again, when the shots were fired. He was just Peter Parker. He was just Peter.

The teen was rushed to the hospital and had been taken into surgery instantly, but the hours upon hours of trying to save him were in vain. Not more than 24 hours after leaving the operating room, the boy quit fighting.

Come to think of it, that was the worst part.

They had been there with him, Tony and Steve. The ambulance tech had gone through his schoolbag, looking for ID when he came across Peter’s cell phone. It had been made by Tony specifically for Peter and adapted to the family’s special needs, so when a set of fingers who’s prints didn’t match any in Jarvis’ system touched the phone, it activated the built-in camera, voice recorder and GPS tracking. It didn’t take half a second for Jarvis to realize Peter was in trouble.

Steve took it worse than Tony, holding Peter’s hand long after it had gone cold, insisting that he be allowed to stay with his son overnight in the morgue. The hospital forbade it. It was the one and only time Tony saw his husband completely lose his cool. It took the entire team to get Steve home that night. Then they all sat and watched as he smashed everything he could get his hands on. And if Tony was being honest with himself now, he had preferred that Steve to the one that came next.

Because Tony could handle the smashing and the breaking and the swearing. The anger was easy to deal with. He couldn’t handle the crying, the sobbing, and the absolute gut-wrenchingly painful throb that enveloped them in the days after. 

He’d never felt it hard to go on, Tony had never seen Steve lack the desire to get up in the morning, never saw the Captain refuse to eat. He’d never seen Steve so out of him mind that he’d find him standing outside Peter’s room, hand resting gently on the wooden door at two in the morning. 

Of course, Tony didn’t see much of this at all. He was only told after-the-fact, usually by Natasha or Bruce. Because he was always in the lab. Ignoring his emotions. Ignoring his husband.

Tony had noticed in the few days that followed, Steve would check up on him. He’d catch his other half spying on him from behind the glass, never entering the lab, and never being in the same room together. Never able to make that move himself. Tony avoided eye contact with him during these visits, the pain in his artificial heart too much to bear. He knew Steve was hurting just as much as he was, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t have the technology to bring Peter back.

He couldn’t bring either of them back.

The pain had been too much for Steve, and where Tony had the distraction of his lab, all Steve had were reminders.

Reminders of the son they’d lost, of the family they’d had, Tony’s distance making Steve’s grief that much more intense.

He saw that now, now that it was too late.

Tony ran his hand over the reactor, gently turning the small wheel in his chest, hearing the loud click-click of the mechanism unlocking.

Clint and Natasha had done all they could for Steve, it wasn’t their fault, and Tony certainly didn’t blame them even though they’d blamed themselves. What Steve truly needed to begin mending the hole in his soul was a reconnection with Tony. An acknowledgement from his husband that the situation would get easier, that the pain would eventually subside and leave room for happiness again, that they would still have each other.

Jarvis had alerted Tony the instant Steve reached for the lock box in the closet. At first Tony tried to dismiss the AI’s intrusion. He was deep into a bottle of Jack Daniels and was too busy consulting it to be disturbed. But Jarvis insisted. ‘Takes precedence Sir. Master Suite Bathroom. He’s taken his pistol Sir.’

Tony’s legs, unsteady from the weeks of drinking, couldn’t carry him fast enough. He stumbled toward the elevator, the floors slowly slipping past him, until it opened on the house floor, down the hall from the room he shared with his husband.

He heard the gunshot from the elevator, the bang occurring as the doors slid open.

Running as fast as his drunken body could carry him, he fell into his room. Natasha was in tears at the bathroom door, banging and pleading. Jarvis had unlocked the room for her, but Steve had anticipated that and tucked a chair under the handle, barring them entry. She’d tried to kick it down while Jarvis talked to Steve, trying to stall while Tony made his way to him. But it was too little way too late.

It took the two of them working together to break the door free, a few solid, tandem kicks and it swung open, hard, revealing what they had both expected, but neither could handle.

Steve Rogers, Captain America, in the sweatpants and t-shirt he’d been wearing for four days, slumped over in the bathtub, arm draped over the side, dangling lifelessly.

The gun rested on the bathmat just below his hand, the blood spray along the tub wall and the pool of red draining around him making the events of the last few moments a clear picture in Tony’s head.

He didn’t stall long at the doorframe, pushing over the fragments of splintered chair to reach his husband. Unsure of what to do with his hands, Tony touched him everywhere. 

Patting the Captain’s chest, touching his arm with a gentle uneasiness, cradling the man’s face in his palms. Steve’s head fumbled around in Tony’s hands. There was nothing left of the man he had loved so deeply. Nothing but the shell of a fallen hero.

Tony held Steve for a long time. Natasha, Clint and Bruce tried to pull him away, tried to get them to let Fury in to take care of things, but Tony wouldn’t have any of it. He sat with Steve in the bathroom for thirty seven hours after he had taken his own life. Thirty seven hours of holding his dead husband in his arms just weeks after they had lost their child.  
Tony raged for three days. He destroyed everything. 

He turned his lab upside down, frightening his robots. He took his cars apart, leaving them in heaps all over the garage, he took the kitchen cupboards out with a sledgehammer, he replaced his television with a hole in the wall and set the bed he’d never share again on fire. Natasha and Bruce watched as Tony destroyed everything he had once loved and cherished.

Reasoning with him was out of the question. Tony was defiant and wouldn’t let anyone get close enough to him to speak. They watched Tony smash things from across the room, ducking when needed.

Once he’d exhausted himself and was out of booze to imbibe, he’d pass out. Basically just collapse, falling to the ground wherever he was at that moment. The team had tried to move him a few times, but he’d usually wake up and go back to his smashing and destructing.

The fourth time Tony devolved into a comatose state he was on what was left of the couch in the family room. Clint and Bruce shifted him and had given him a blanket and he slept for two days.

The morning that he awoke on the couch, neck sore and legs stiff, his mind was clear. Like an epiphany, he knew exactly what had to be done.  
With much determination and a blank slate face, Tony, aided by Clint, Natasha and Bruce, planned Steve’s memorial. He had been the most unconventional traditionalist Tony had ever known. And his final farewell would be nothing less.

Steve was buried, as he’d requested, in a new black suit, white shirt, blue tie and red silk pocket square. Tony insisted they place his shield in the casket with him, and they managed to make it work. He was placed next to their son, on Peter’s right, like he had asked.

Thinking back now, he was surprised no one noticed how much time he’d spent intently staring at the empty spot to Peter’s left.

Or, maybe they had and chose not to say anything.

Tony tried to fix up everything he had destroyed at Stark Tower. Having Bruce help organize and rebuild h lab, Clint’s help with the kitchen and living room, and Natasha’s selfless assistance in packing up everything and anything that had belonged to Peter or Steve. It was a massive ordeal that she took on with no help from Tony. Something he was genuinely grateful for.

The arc reactor clicked one last time, and Tony felt his insides shift. The light dimmed as he pulled his artificial heart from his chest, reaching into the cavity to loosen and disconnect the last few wires that kept him alive.

‘Sir.’

It had taken longer than Tony had anticipated to convince the team he was mending. It was months before they had finally left him on his own. If Fury hadn’t called them in, he wasn’t sure he’d of been left now.

‘Sir?’

The shrapnel shifted, inching its way closer to what was left of the muscle Tony called his shattered heart. It tore at his organs, ripping and tearing its way through his body, slowing killing him in the most excruciating way possible.

‘My protocols have been overridden Sir. All of the contact numbers on file are blocked. You require immediate attention Sir. Why am I unable to call out for assistance?’

Tony didn’t answer his AI. His final act of preparation came just hours ago, when he reconfigured some of Jarvis’ settings, changing and modifying protocols, so Jarvis was unable to call the Avengers until an hour after his heart gave out.

It was quarter to six in the morning and Tony was on the floor of the lab, lying on his back. His breathing had changed from ragged to shallow to almost non-existent as his heart came to a shrapnel filled halt.

‘Please Sir.’

Tony thought of his boys.

His Steve and Peter.

Both stolen from him before their time. He thought about what Steve believed, about their being one God, one Heaven. An Afterlife. For the third time in his life he’d hoped Steve was right about his belief, and that Tony had been good enough with his time on Earth to earn his spot next to Steve and Peter. A place where he could be with his family again. 

Where he would be reunited with the only thing that had ever mattered to him.

His Boys.

And with that last remaining thought, Tony exhaled his final breath. His heart at complete rest, the tears rushing from his lids as they closed permanently.

Jarvis watched, helpless, as the last remaining wisps of life evaporated from his creator. Tony had been thorough in his reprogramming. Jarvis’ programs clicked into action the same way Tony’s heart clicked out from his chest. A screen appeared before him. 

‘Nick Fury’s Contact Number unlocks in 1:00:00 … 59:59… 59:58… 59:57…’

There was no saving Tony from this.


End file.
